Zionism During the Holocaust: The weaponisation of memory in the service of state and nation by Tony Greenstein (2022) reviewed by Socialist Aotearoa member Doug.

This is one of the greatest exposés of Zionism ever written, highly detailed, heavily researched and documented. The revelations in this book are earth-shattering for Israel and Zionism, and anyone who supports Israel.

Of course, they don’t want you to read this book, the author of which is currently under strict bail conditions in the UK, awaiting trial on charges under the Terrorism Act for a tweet defending the right of Palestinians to resist Israel’s genocide. I imagine the Zionist lobby have him in their sights as enemy number one.

The purpose of the book is clearly stated from the outset: it is intended to challenge Israel’s weaponisation of the memory of Jewish Holocaust victims as a justification for its ongoing actions against Palestinians.

The level of complicity of Zionism as well as the collaboration of Zionists in the Holocaust is mind-blowing. If enough people read this book there should be no support for them ever again. 

Tony Greenstein thoroughly examines a critical period in the development of the Israeli national narrative, exposing the history of Zionism and specifically the role it played during the Holocaust. The book highlights the fact that, when Hitler first came to power in 1933, German goods were subject to crippling boycotts in the West, and its economy was in deep depression. If this had continued it would have collapsed, and it could be argued that this would have been the end of the Nazi government. But the Zionists used their connections among powerful Jewish individuals around the world, and travelled widely to successfully lift the boycott, and the rest as they say is history. The Ha’avara (Transfer) Agreement, which broke the international anti-German boycott, is a key exhibit. The Zionist leadership consistently placed benefit to the strengthening of the new Yishuv, the Jewish settler community in Palestine, above the rescue of Jews.

There are many references in the book to how Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to stop working-class Jews from seeking refugee status in other countries, in order for the Zionists to have a larger pool of Jews to choose from for their Zionist project in Palestine, enabling them to select “the better class of Jews”. This, as Tony points out, is a fundamental feature of Zionism. It is a white-supremacist elitist authoritarian class-based ideology very similar to Nazi ideology and fascism. There are many examples in his book of conversations between the Nazis and Zionists, where they agree that they have more in common with each other than they do with their own countrymen or religion, in terms of “the chosen ones” or the “supreme Aryan race”. Greenstein argues that Zionism and antisemitism share a fundamental premise. Antisemitism claims that Jews do not belong to the Christian nations of Europe; Zionism agrees, insisting that Jewish nationality is Jewish rather than European. Where antisemitism told Jews to emigrate to Palestine, Zionism amplified that message. 

Tony points out that Zionism was founded by antisemitic Christians in Britain as a means to solve “the Jewish problem.” It was never popular among Jews and the Jews who took it up were bourgeois Jews who were also anti-communist. As the global bourgeois are anti-communist, so were the Zionists as were the Nazis. This is why they have so much in common. Most working class Jews at the time were very much opposed to Zionism prior to the Holocaust. The numerous examples of Zionist collaboration with the Nazis leaves me in no doubt that they were far more interested in their geopolitical ambitions than they were in the interests of the vast majority of Jews.

The book is extremely well researched – an impressive level of scholarship and well-documented historical research has gone in to it. Every finding is referenced to the point where it would be very hard for any Zionist to try to refute it.

This book is a must read for anyone who is serious about understanding the genocide in Gaza and the history of imperialism and colonialism in West Asia. 

Author Tony Greenstein is a founding member of the UK Palestine Solidarity Campaign, author of several books, and writes for various publications including Aljazeera and Palestine Chronicle.